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rdnetto sends in this clip from TorrentFreak. To pursue these plans the Pirate Party needs to win 4% of the seats in Parliament in an election coming up in September. "After their former hosting provider received an injunction telling it to stop providing bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, the worlds most resilient BitTorrent site switched to a new ISP. That host, the Swedish Pirate Party, made a stand on principle. Now they aim to take things further by running the site from inside the Swedish Parliament. ... The party has announced today that they intend to use part of the Swedish Constitution to further these goals, specifically Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate. They intend to push the non-commercial sharing part of their manifesto, by running The Pirate Bay from inside the Parliament, by Members of Parliament."

The party has announced today that they intend to use part of the Swedish Constitution to further these goals, specifically Parliamentary Immunity from prosecution or lawsuit for things done as part of their political mandate.

Great, I'm moving to Sweden and starting The Real Pirate Party. Our platform will include roaming the seas and capturing merchant ships and this Swedish law will grant us complete immunity from prosecution!

Now we just have to get 4% of the vote but that should be easy because we'll give a portion of the loot in exchange for votes.

Ok, the example might have been bad but the point still stands. One can imagine all kinds of illegal/immoral/unethical things done 'inside' the parliament as well, with the protection of immunity as long as you can convince 4% of people to support it. If they were doing this in order to illustrate the absurdity of that law, I would applaud them. If they actually intend to use it, then I don't think they are doing themselves any favors.

Ok, the example might have been bad but the point still stands. One can imagine all kinds of illegal/immoral/unethical things done 'inside' the parliament as well, with the protection of immunity as long as you can convince 4% of people to support it.

Which differs from governmental practice in most countries how exactly?
Fraud, bribery, extra marital affairs, Who the hell needs imagination? It's common bloody knowledge!

Ok, the example might have been bad but the point still stands. One can imagine all kinds of illegal/immoral/unethical things done 'inside' the parliament as well, with the protection of immunity as long as you can convince 4% of people to support it. If they were doing this in order to illustrate the absurdity of that law, I would applaud them. If they actually intend to use it, then I don't think they are doing themselves any favors.

If its done by the parliament it's ethical according to Sweden. There are no objective ethical values because each country has a different national interest.

No, it's not necessarily ethical; rather, it would be legal (which you probably meant). Two things often align, but are very different beasts. Ethical (or more accurately, moral) viewpoint is with respect to right and wrong; legality just whether it is acceptable according to local legal standard.

And while ethical issues are indeed not black-and-white, they seldom have anything to do with national interests.

No, it's not necessarily ethical; rather, it would be legal (which you probably meant). Two things often align, but are very different beasts. Ethical (or more accurately, moral) viewpoint is with respect to right and wrong; legality just whether it is acceptable according to local legal standard.

And while ethical issues are indeed not black-and-white, they seldom have anything to do with national interests.

Governments don't have ethics but they do have laws. If it's legal then it's ethical according to the government.

Governments don't have ethics but they do have laws. If it's legal then it's ethical according to the government.

Interesting point, however, all governments on earth are constructed entirely of human beings.

The ethics of human beings who work for the government are very different from the ethics of human beings who don't. If you work for the government as a soldier then right and wrong is whatever leads to success/mission accomplishment.

If you're a government civilian employee then right and wrong is whatever is legal regardless of how you feel about what goes on.

So right and wrong are determined by profession as well. What is right for an individual in one profession would not be right for an individual in an

You'll have a hard time getting 4% of the vote without booty to pay them off and doing it would be illegal before you get into parliament. Also, you missed the point entirely in that they have to move the Servers INSIDE parliament for them to be outside of jurisdiction, so unless you plan on pirating from INSIDE the building, your point is moot.

If the pirate party came into parliament I (as a Swedish TPB and PP supporter) think the laws will be changed swiftly to make this illegal, just like it happened for Zenon Panoussis [wikipedia.org]. Even stronger forces than the CoS are against TPB.
But I'm glad that they're doing this, at least it's great PR..

As it's in the constitution, not just a normal law, they will have to make the proposition to change it this election period (only a few months left), then have the majority of the parliament vote yes for it the next election period, and then have the parliament the election period after that also vote yes. Not until then it can be changed.

On the other hand, they have ignored the constitution before because Sweden doesn't have a constitutional court, only a "constitution committee" that can only make "recommendations".

As I've pointed out below [slashdot.org], I don't think they have any constitutional protection in this case. Since your signature suggests you're affiliated with the party can you shed any light on whether there's a specific reason that this constitutional protection would apply here?

I'm a member, an activist and a supporter since the same day it was started but I'm not part of the core team.

They had a debate article [aftonbladet.se] in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet today and they have it translated to English here [piratpartiet.se]. Basically they say that they will host it until its legal status is clarified. That means until it's clarified legal or when it's not possible to appeal to any higher courts.

Unfortunately for them I don't see how this can work. The Swedish Constitution states that:

[...]If, in any other case, a member of the Riksdag is suspected of having committed a criminal act, the relevant rules of law concerning arrest, detention or remand are applied only if he admits guilt or was caught in the act, or the penalty for the offence is imprisonment for two years [or more, I assume; I don't speak Swedish so can't check the translation].

[Chapter 4, Article 8]

Under Swedish law copyright infringement carries a penalty of two years imprisonment, so I don't think they will have any criminal immunity.

The submitter seems to have confused immunity with prosecution and immunity from civil lawsuits; matters carried out as part of a political mandate are only immune from civil lawsuits (the criminal immunity, above, would appear to apply or not apply irrespective of whether the actions were part of a political mandate). What's more, this civil immunity can be waived by a 5/6 majority of those voting - I can't imagine this would be hard to arrange against an unpopular single candidate.

I'm not a Swedish lawyer (believe it or not!) but I hope they've checked with one because they seem to be relying on more protection than they actually have.

I agree with you. It is disingenuous to say that running a bittorrent tracker isn't promoting copyright infringement. Unless your tracker specializes in, say, Linux distros (rare), then almost certainly the vast majority of your tracker's use is for illegal filesharing.

People should not make that argument (except in court, where it might juuuust work), because it is transparently misleading.

Instead, people should stick to the point, which is that the copyright laws themselves are absurd, anti-consumer, bad for culture, bad for humanity, bad in almost every way, and thus any action to subvert them is righteous. That argument is more plain, perfectly transparent, and most importantly, it is true.

Here's a better translation (You were right about two or more years, or in the exact wording, "no less than two"): Swedish Constitution [unibe.ch] (You'll have to scroll down to chapter four article eight).

I don't know where this myth came from (probably people trying to make moral rather than legal or logical arguments about piracy). There are federal criminal laws regarding copyright and trademark infringement. Many, many states have their own versions.

Actually, that's a really good point. As citizens of industrialized nations, we've witnessed some truly weird and vile shit just in the last decade alone due to the final stages of corporatized political parties. Traditional methods, like letter campaigns, protests and such no longer work as well or at all.

In other words, you have to be big and ballsy these days just to get noticed, let alone get anything done.

Works for me, too. If we're seeing the beginning of "4th gen" politics, then democracy might still have a chance.

Actually, that's a really good point. As citizens of industrialized nations, we've witnessed some truly weird and vile shit just in the last decade alone due to the final stages of corporatized political parties. Traditional methods, like letter campaigns, protests and such no longer work as well or at all.

We've seen the corporate parties perpetrate some of the most in-your-face anti-democratic agendas imaginable. In the US, for example, (get this) corporations are now considered to be people and to have the same rights of free speech! Overturning a century of legal precedent and two centuries of the framers' intent was nothing to these corporate tools.

It's good to see that there's at least one group of pro-democratic politicians who are willing to do something equally as bold in behalf of the People's interest.

If the Pirate Party can continue to show media savvy, they might be a force to be reckoned with, and not just in Sweden.

Long story short, they need PR now. Next year the content industry can shut down the Pirate Party as TPB's ISP like they did with the last one and make most people forget it by 2014. So now they're hoping for controversy and press, because the Pirate Party is virtually untouchable from now and until the national election in September. It is highly questionable if running an ISP can be considered a "political activity", but just creating the debate on it is a victory. The downside is that they are again hitting the media almost as the Pirate Bay Party, when they spend the other half of the time telling everybody they're not a single issue party and there's more to their ideology than that. So they're more looking for someone to stomp their brass balls than not, really.

As a Swedish-speaking American (Living in Finland), I can say that Swedish is an incredibly easy language not unlike old English. I was able to pick it up in about a year. The culture is different enough to shock, but you'll recover, it's really very western.

Close to all Swedes would be "english speaking", at least partly and most likely quite good at it. Just don't have us actually TALK english:D

A) I have no idea, if you live within the EU just get here? If not then maybe it's more annoying, I have no idea, doubt it's a real problem though.I think Sweden is considered to have plenty of wild-life compared to most other nations, sure Canada, Russia and Finland may have similar wealth. So if that's your cup of tea..Summers are nice, the gulf-stream keep us from

Although the Pirate Party may be applying a karate chop type of action in a controversial area it can be pointed out that outfits that want all of this strict copyright type of nonsense rely on the police and their weapons as the ultimate means of enforcement. The political system creates a situation in which the one with the power is just and right. Now the Pirate Party has come up with a clever use of law that trumps the other side completely. Sauce for goose is sauce for gander.

Given that the *AAs have attempted to manipulate the Swedish legal system, I'd say that this has less to do with the right to piracy than getting pissed that a set of wealthy, largely foreign, entertainment cartels have tried to shanghai their courts and politicians.

It makes you wonder how different things in the US would be if our government had any real concept, let alone the threat of no-confidence.

This reminds me of Pablo Escobar [wikipedia.org] who actually got elected to Columbia's Congress so as to avoid extradition to the USA for the various crimes he committed. He was eventually kicked out because the rest of the Congress saw right through this (and strangely enough Escobar ended up getting his way anyway by just paying off enough of those same members of Congress to amend the Columbian constitution with a no extradition bill). Now this post isn't equating copyright infringement with the various crimes that Escobar committed, but it will be interesting to see how the Swedish Parliament reacts internally to this matter.

There are, not surprisingly, not a lot of options when it comes to actual micronations, nor could you really enforce the contract once you've handed over your money except by barrel of a gun (in which case why bother handing over the money in the first place?). Bigger nations easily could (and probably should) squash these micronations when they feel like it.

I take it someone will start a Pedo Party and claim that sex with minors is part of their political platform.
"I know she's only 13, but this is a matter of political philosophy!"

A German politician (Joerg Tauss [wikipedia.org]) recently tried to use his parlamentary immunity as a defence against CP charges. He couldn't convince his fellow representatives, or the judge for that matter -- so his immunity was stripped by the parliament and he was convicted in court...

CP, like most other felonies, is sufficiently yucky that most politicians wouldn't dare to try to protect one of their ranks against prosecution.

If you were in Japan, Spain, or about 20 other countries, 13 would be above the age of consent. Sweden is 15, which is about the worldwide average. Above 16 is the exception.

And regarding the wide pedo-brush that people like to smear these laws with, dangerous pedophiles don't care about consent or laws in general. There's very little correlation, in fact, between state-enforced moral laws and the amount of child rape, sexual abuse, or teen pregnancies. These laws mostly end up turning early-maturing teenagers into "sex offenders" with a life-long criminal record.

So yes, the criminality of under-18s having sex is very much a political issue and not a universal moral constant.

If you were in Japan, Spain, or about 20 other countries, 13 would be above the age of consent.

In Japan, 13 is the national age of consent. Age of consent is restricted by various prefectural laws and is generally 18. Your statement is similar to saying that there is no age of consent law in the USA. While it is true that there is no federally defined age of consent (for civilians) in the United States, no one is likely to believe such an obvious mis-statement.

There's a problem with trying to apply a number one finds on the internet to a foreign culture of which one has little direct knowledge.

Can you name a democratic country where everything the government does makes sense (eg. "war on drugs" is prevalent in most of the world). Is having the country run by Christians or oil magnates really any more sensible than pirates?

Super Adventure Club Head Explorer: [Our founder, Phinehas] discovered that children have things called marlocks in their bodies. And when an adult has sex with a child, the marlocks implode, feeding the adult receptive cavity with energy that causes immortality, so saith the ruler of Bethos. Phinehas traveled the world, loving many, many children, and he lived for eternity. Until he was hit by a train in 1892.Kyle: Do you realize how retarded that sounds?Super A

If they do it to avoid prosecution why not take it one step further and just start hosting the items themselves?

Because they are more interested in promoting free speech than actually distributing copyrighted materials. They want to show that free speech is absolute, even when it happens to be inconvenient to other parties. They want to make sure that hosting a website that basically lists people interested in engaging in copyright infringement should be allowed as free speech.

It's the same reason the NRA fights assault weapons bans in the US. The vast majority of gun owners couldn't give two shits about high-powered assault rifles, but as long as the debate is squarely focused on those, then their hunting rifles and target pistols will remain relatively unrestricted.

The Pirate Party isn't really interested in providing easy access to your "0-day warez!!11!!!ONE!!1". That's just a means to get people thinking and talking about what free speech is and should be and to focus debate on modifying existing copyright laws, which are, in their opinion, a source of undue enrichment for media consortia.

The NRA and other gunslingers fight those laws because they consider the constitution to be absolute. The constitution grants US citizens the right to have weapons to protect themselves against forces both foreign and domestic. The police forces active either local, state or federal are some of those forces which could easily become a military force against citizens as has happened in many other 3rd world countries and they have fully automatic armor-piercing weapons.

An "assault rifle" is a military designation for a short-barreled select-fire (i.e. can be switched to fire bursts or continuously) gun designed for use in restricted areas - such a popping up through a hatch in a tank. (They usually fire such a low-powered bullet that the semi-auto (one-shot-per-trigger-pull-only) civilian plowshare versions are banned as hunting weapons. Too cruel: The prey is wounded and escapes to suffer, rather than dying quickly.)

An "assault weapon" is a legal term invented by gun banners to ban civilian guns. It refers to semi-auto guns with any of several scary-looking but irrelevant accessory features, and is used to whittle away at the right to keep and bear arms.

Also: Much of what the second amendment is about is the ability to resist a runaway government - foreign or domestic. It functions as an insurance policy against a runaway government just ignoring the constitution and doing whatever it pleases to the population: The population CAN fight back, and the threat has retarded this tendency of government for over two centuries. (Example: Nixon was rumored to have asked a think tank what would happen if he postponed the elections. Think tank told him over half the population was armed and such an event would be a trigger for an uprising.)

Also: NRA is one of the wimpiest of the pro-gun organizations. For instance: They actually opposed bringing D.C. v Heller to court. Others with more guts: Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO: putting teeth in "Never Again!"), and a number of others.

The constitution grants US citizens the right to have weapons to protect themselves against forces both foreign and domestic.

Wrong. The Constitution does not grant citizens any rights. ALL rights are assumed to be wholly enjoyed by citizens. What the Constitution does is grant some specific rights to the government, and places hard-line restrictions against any laws which might infringe on certain rights; such as freedom of worship (thus, any law allowing or preventing marriage is unconstitutional), restriction of the freedom of the press (speech), barring the right to assemble (free speech zones, anyone? permits, anyone?), bearing of arms (no assault weapons, anyone? I'd say that is an infringement), no search and siezure without probable cause unless you have a warrant (homeland security theater and patriot act, anyone?)

Don't worry a lot of people get it backwards and don't understand that ALL rights are retained by Citizens except where specifically granted to the government by the Constitution.

From their declaration of principles: (their, not mine, I'm not interested in discussing the subject at the moment)

When copyrights were originally created, they only regulated the right of a creator tobe recognized as the creator. It has later been expanded to cover commercial copyingof works as well as also limiting the natural rights of private citizens and non-profitorganizations. We say that this shift of balance has prompted an unacceptabledevelopment for all of society. Economic and technological dev